People & Places

BEST JOKE AT THE EXPENSE OF THE NEW GOVERNOR Minneapolis 1999 -

Everybody's had their fun with the new governor: late-night TV hosts, the national press, Garrison Keillor. Even Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau got some mileage out of lampooning our beloved blowhard. After Ventura remarked on The Late Show with David Letterman that the streets of St. Paul appeared to be the handiwork of drunken Irishmen, many bashed and heckled the new guv. But none better than the St. Paul City Council, which memorialized its riposte in a resolution at the following day's council meeting: "Whereas the streets of St. Paul were designed and named to keep wrestlers and other undesirables out and whereas this plan is obviously not working; now therefore be it resolved that the St. Paul City Council directs the Public Works Department to rename all the streets with the same name and invites Gov. Jesse Ventura on a tour of St. Paul since he will be living here for the next four years and we would not want him to get lost." After the council unanimously passed the measure on February 24, someone suggested sending the resolution to the gube forthwith. Whereupon council member Chris Coleman quipped, "And read it to him."